


The Pearl

by Tibby



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-12
Updated: 2014-12-12
Packaged: 2018-03-01 04:40:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2759939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tibby/pseuds/Tibby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary Morstan Watson's disappearance was not a death, merely a changing of shells.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Pearl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rabidsamfan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidsamfan/gifts).



In the years following the disappearance of my friend Sherlock Holmes, it may be imagined that my mind was often uneasy and preyed upon by sorrow. At that time, I took solace in the one dear person who remained to me. I felt myself luckier than ever to have set up a fine home with a good and understanding woman. In the first weeks, at least, I found I needed such orderly surroundings to keep life simple when I could not do so myself. Then, suddenly, Mary grew sick and I feared that I would have to suffer again and, unlike before, in isolation.

There are events in my life that I have not written about, not because they are of no interest to myself, but because they can be of little interest to the public. The common happenings of life are frequently turned into great literature, as evidenced by a great many novels and memoirs, but they are not subjects that appeal to me. The one subject in this literary career of mine has been, and always will be, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. I am only making this one exception, an exception that is purely for my own benefit and not intended for publication. It is meant only as some small memorial to Mary.

It was early in the spring of 1893 when my wife first became ill. It started as nothing more than a head cold, but she remained in fragile health all that April. I examined her myself but could find nothing wrong besides an increasingly frail constitution. She became prone to fainting and my colleagues suggested that she might be suffering from a nervous disorder of some sort. My wife, I granted them, had been a little agitated of late, but I thought it more likely to be an effect of her illness rather than the cause.

It was actually Mary who first suggested the remedy I had in mind: nothing more than a dose of clean air and rest. I knew I had quite a few patients to see, but I managed to move forward a good many appointments and coerce Anstruther into taking the others. I was free within the fortnight, and so we packed our bags one night and took a train to the coast the next morning.

That journey, as I remember it, was uneventful. The train ran as smoothly and punctually as an English train could muster. Mary and I talked idly of household matters, my workload, and the conduct of our friends and neighbours. For a long time after she slept. Then she woke and we merely stole glances at each other as we silently surveyed our reflections in the compartment’s window.

My Mary heaved a sigh as she caught her first sight of the sea.

“Dear James,” she said, then, “Do you know, I haven’t been on the water since I was a small child. And I haven’t been in it since I was a child even smaller.”

I had rented rooms in a boarding house by the sea. The place was clean, simply furnished and quite comfortable enough for the two of us. We did not spend much time there during the day in any case. Mary would sit in a chair on the sand for much of the morning. Then we would lunch at a hotel nearby and walk the promenade until Mary needed to rest once more. The first day seemed to work a miracle. Mary’s complexion, which had been slightly sallow even in health, seemed fresher than it ever had been. Her voice and manner were full of energy, and she proved as much by walking the length of the beach without a stop. I felt sure that I had worried unnecessarily. The illness, it seemed, had been left back in London.

However, the next day Mary seemed a little paler. That was no great worry, as far as I could tell. I reminded myself of the old mantra: one step forward, two steps back. Yet, with each passing day she seemed to grow weaker until I was more afraid than ever. She insisted on being taken down to the shore each morning, but soon I found that I could not, in all good conscience, allow it.

I had taken her slim wrist between my thumb and fingers. I told her how weak the pulse was in the hope that she would stop protesting against being kept in.

“I am sorry, my dearest,” she had said in reply, “But I can feel my heartbeat, and it’s stronger than it ever was.”

I shook my head. She was clearly delirious. I wondered for a moment whether she mistook the rhythmic wash of the waves for her own heartbeat.

The most that Mary would admit to was a slight headache. I cursed myself for being a supposed medical man. Not only was I ashamed of being perplexed by Mary’s complaint, I was beset with guilt that I could not cure it. My mind, I admit, turned to the one brain I respected above all others, and I cursed him too for his absence.

But guilt, I knew, did no good; I needed action.

I left Mary in the room and went to a nearby chemist I knew of. I returned as soon as I had bought a lavender tincture, but I should never have left at all. The room was empty. I cannot explain how a sick woman, too weak to walk, had disappeared from a half-full boarding house without being seen. She had, however, left a note… 

_My Dearest James,  
I expect I will have left you by the time you read this. I will be thankful for that, as, if you were to question me on anything I avoid saying here, I am sure I would tell you everything. Rest assured that you know as much about my life as anyone living, save myself. As for the remainder, I can only make ill use of your love by asking you to forgive me for keeping silent. I am convinced that the truth will be of no benefit to you._

 

I passed back the papers he had handed me. He did not ask me to speak, but something in his silence unlocked all the words I had, at the time of writing, been too afraid to utter.

“I do not have many memories of my father,” I told him, “I remember occasionally leaving the side of my Ayah to spend a few hours with him, when he would take me down to the sea and we would talk as we walked along the sand. I was quite, quite young at that time, you understand. I left India before I turned eight, so I hope you will be sympathetic when I tell you that I can barely remember the Captain’s voice, let alone many of his words. The one recollection I have of these talks is that he once told me he had lived through two extraordinary circumstances in his life. One, although I did not know it then, must have been the great mystery through which I made your acquaintance. The other, he told me of that day.

As I’m certain you remember, Captain Morstan was stationed in Port Blair following the Indian mutiny. It was there that he raised me for some time. It was there that he… found me. He said, although I don’t expect you to believe it, that when he first came across me I was no bigger than the nail of his thumb, rolled all into a ball. At first he thought he had made a great discovery. He had cracked open the oyster hoping, in a mood of homesickness and hunger, that Indian oysters and Whitstable oysters were much of a likeness. Instead, he saw a perfect round pearl resting on its plump, soft couch. He thought he had found a fortune for himself. I think he must have been disappointed when he peered at it more closely and saw me, a tiny child, with white skin turning pink as I shifted in my shell.

I know how this sounds - like a fairytale any man would tell his wide-eyed daughter. But as soon as he spoke of it, I remembered that shell of mine and the years I had spent there. I knew that all he said was true, for, ever since my birth, I have had the taste of the salt sea in my mouth.”

Again, he did not question me. Again he was silent, and then…

“That does very well for the story of your origins. What,” said he, “of your death? What of the body that was found left by the tide?”

“We must, all of us, wear our shells,” I replied, “But we must also change them when the time comes.”

“When the time comes,” he echoed.

I was unsure of how far I believed my own answer. When I had stepped into his home, I had recalled my own old life in a quick, vivid moment. I had felt its loss. Surely, I began to think, one shell is quite as good as another? Why, then, had I given up the one I had freely chosen?

I saw, however, that Sherlock Holmes had believed all I had told him. He had done more than that - he had understood. Indeed, I realised that he had already seen the change in me. Perhaps he had even noticed hours ago, when he had looked up from his beehives and seen me leaning over the garden fence.

When I put this to him, he merely said, “You look paler than before.”

 

_You must know how difficult this is for me. I love you. I am sure you are the only one I could ever love._

 

“What of this part?”

I looked over the words, unsure as to what he wanted to know.

“It’s not true,” he continued once he was sure I would not speak.

He stood up from his chair to stoke the fire, looming over it like a great dark bird. I noticed that his black hair had turned grey, but there was overall a sense of familiarity in the scene. Something in that combination moved me. Indeed, I almost lost his words in my reverie, but I soon after recalled them and my sentiment did not stand in the way of indignation.

“It’s entirely true,” I protested, “I have always loved him.”

“I make no quarrel with that. There is also, written here, the assertion that he was ‘the only one’.”

“If you mean the young man in Edinburgh…” I began, but Sherlock Holmes cut me short with a shake of his head.

“Mr. McCandless hardly bears mentioning. I was thinking of your former employer.”

Perhaps it was foolish of me, but I had never suspected him of knowing. We were suddenly discussing a matter that I had thought finished with years ago. I was entirely unprepared. I had, for several years, been freed from complexities and half-truths and the ill-fitting masks that people make themselves wear. Why had I come back? I tried to remind myself. Meanwhile, Sherlock Holmes spoke.

“What was that ‘little domestic complication’ I assisted Mrs. Forrester in? I believe she was being blackmailed by a former parlour maid…” 

“That does not signify a thing,” I cried, growing rather hot.

“You’re quite correct. It doesn’t. However, I find that love is the least subtle of all emotions. I could tell that love was involved when I first saw the two of you together, and I had suspicions when you first mentioned her name. Mrs. Cecil Forrester… It was the way you hurried over the husband’s name in hers. You were clearly in an entanglement with one or the other.”

“It was not much of a lie to tell. He was the one I loved most. What good would it have been to tell him that I loved him most but not only?”

Mr. Holmes looked at me coolly but he grew almost kind as he said, “I won’t judge you for that. You are not the only one to have lied to him.”

He was standing no more than a foot from me. He had one hand resting on the mantelpiece, where, in a strangely domestic arrangement that verged on wry humour, were placed two photographs, one at each end. For the moment, I turned self-consciously from the face of my husband and caught, instead, the eye of Miss Irene Adler, half-obscured as she was by Mr. Holmes. I wondered whether to put my hand on his. He looked older, I think, than I was prepared for him to be.

I did not touch his hand.

“I forgot,” I said, “It’s almost funny, isn’t it? We’re two ghosts talking.”

 

_Yours ever,  
M._

 

I reread the last words I had left my husband.

“I’m expecting him Friday,” Mr. Holmes was saying, “Will you stay?”

Would I stay? I tried to imagine how it might be if I did. I could not make out all the difficult conversations that I knew must occur. I could only imagine him. The vision was bright before the waves came flooding back through my mind.

“He would want to see you,” Mr. Holmes said, gently.

Would I stay?

I could feel my heart falling out of time with the tide.


End file.
